After mocking Nagakura’s pre-fight haka ritual, the southpaw Tsuda
started the fight seemingly brimming with confidence. The
self-assuredness paid off early as the Tsudanuma Dojo product timed
a perfect takedown-feint with a huge right hook that flattened
Nagakura. Tsuda immediately pounced into mount and threw in a few
hard punches before referee Masato
Fukuda dove in to stop the fight only 1:19 in.

“These days, everyone is always talking about American MMA, but I
want to make the Japanese scene strong again,” Tsuda told the Tokyo
Dome City Hall crowd. “I want American fighters to start coming
here to fight again.”

The win sets up a future bout with champion Yokota, who joined
Tsuda in the cage.

“He’s a good fighter, but the guys he’s beaten aren’t like the guys
I’ve beaten,” Yokota remarked. “I’m going to overwhelm him.”

After filling in for an injured Yoshiki
Harada on two days’ notice, Korean Doo Li Song
found himself in too deep in his non-title match with Yokota. The
champion used takedowns to wear down the young fill-in, eventually
moving to mount in the second round and pounding away until a late
stoppage from referee Yuji Shimada finally came at the 4-minute
mark.

After the win, Yokota admitted he had been nervous leading up to
the fight, though not for the fight itself, but because former
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, a noted pro-wrestling and MMA fan,
had come to watch the bout.

The seasoned judoka made 200-pound Sakuragi seem like a
lightweight, picking him up for big slams and tossing him to the
ground on multiple occasions. Sakuragi had no answers for the
former Yoshida Dojo leader’s top game, eventually succumbing to a
tight arm-triangle choke 2:49 into round three.

In a closely contested bantamweight matchup, former champion
Takafumi
Otsuka outwrestled Paraestra Chiba’s Toshiaki
Kitada, earning a unanimous decision victory. Despite being
fought mostly from the clinch position, the bout went back and
forth, coming down to little more than a few split-second takedowns
from the younger Otsuka. With the victory, Otsuka improves his
record to 16-12-1 and sets himself up for another shot at his
former title.

In his first fight in Japan in six years, Yoshiyuki
Yoshida completely dominated Korean striker Won Sik
Park on the ground, submitting him with a rear-naked choke 4:46
into the second round.

At bantamweight, heavy-hitter Yusaku
Nakamura earned a nice comeback victory, taking out “Iron”
Hiroshi
Nakamura with a walk-off KO after being controlled for the
first two rounds. Iron used his powerful wrestling to control the
pace in rounds one and two, but a beautifully timed knee from
Yusaku caught the Bellator veteran right on the chin as he shot in
for a takedown, laying him flat at the 53-second mark of round
three.

In a rather sludgy welterweight affair, Akihiro Gono
and Yuki
Okano pushed an awfully slow pace en route to a split draw.

At light heavyweight, Shunsuke
Inoue used his judo to toss around Korea’s Nae Chul
Kim, earning a split decision after three rounds.

At featherweight, former Shooto champion Hideki
Kadowaki found himself on the receiving end of a rear-naked
choke from Brazilian expat Kleber
Koike Erbst, tapping out 4:21 into round one.

Deep Megaton division mainstay Seigo
Mizuguchi made quick work of Jong Wang
Kim, putting him down with a right hand and pounding his way to
a first round referee stoppage at 1:31 of the super-heavyweight
encounter.